beck123 wrote:The sheep's for you, Luke, but don't expect it to have a life expectancy measured in years.

That is one sheep with 'tude, dude.

By the way, your avatar and signature undergo universal replacement. That is to say, when you make the change in the future, all your previous posts take on the new information, too. So, Beck, when the sheep baa's out, this last post of yours won't make any sense to future generations. In case you're concerned.

Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.

As for the book, sorry, Slava, I did not see your post
on the next page before I posted mine (have to learn
the site yet, and turning the page is one thing to learn.)

The sheep is for me, Beck?
How THOUGHTFUL OF YOU, though I don't know what I
did to deserve it. This being cattle country and all.
As for being "sheepish": bah humbug. You and saparris
can get into the puns, I am not good at them.

\But thanks for the sheep anyhow, Does it have a name????
Saparris is trying to get us avatars. I don't understand how as computers mystify me, and I get all tangled, especially last weekend with doug's site.

TWENTY-FOUR
same rules I learned: spell out 1-9 and numerals for the
rest, and never begin a sentence with a numeral.
Of course Lincoln's "Four score and ten years ago...."
would probably beg to differ.
Todays world is a different one, for sure, and the movie
"10" started it (yuk,yuk) in some ways.
CNN has a program called "360". CBS has "60 minutes".
So I guess we are in a minority, beck.

beck123 wrote:The apostrophe becomes a problem when the next, logical steps are taken with the new construction. If seen as a contraction, then a phrase like "Here are y'all's tickets" begins to accumulate too many apostrophes for our simple language. Using the phrase as a free-standing possessive pronoun, it reads "Here are yalls tickets," where "yall" is the root pronoun and "yalls" the possessive form in parallel with "her" and "hers," "their" and "theirs." And yet in this form, it seems to lack a needed apostrophe.

It does indeed. If yall be considered complete, then the possessive must be yall's. But we already deal with multiple apostrophes when needed (he'll've, she'll've)

beck123 wrote: As I wrote elsewhere in the forum, my opinion is that we shouldn't be writing in this (or any) dialect, anyway; but people do, so I suppose it needs to be addressed.

With all the technology available, dialects should bedisappearing - TV, radio, etc. : we can hear each otherand speak to each other. This should ultimatelyeliminate the Boston "drawl", southern stuff, midwesternwhatever.

Let's hope this never happens (it already is happening, but we can dream). What a boring world it would be where everything is identical.

And I hold hope that, were we to reach that point, the creative among us would deliberately come up with variances.

In another post, I forget where,
Beck and I were discussing the advantages and beauty
of dialects. I think we are on the same page.
I appreciate the comments however, sluggo, and
I hope the media do not destroy the diversity. I love
to hear Brits and Aussies speak. Also a good
Sutherner from Caroliner is fun to listen to!

I was just about to respond to Beck's inquiry elsewhere (now lost) about the you-plural he rendered as yous.

This was prolly the prevailing you-plural where I grew up in SE PA, but in written form was rendered youse, I guess to make the U long. To my eyes the first time I saw it, I presumed what I was looking at should rhyme with house, louse and mouse. Didn't make the connection.

In normal speech the vowel is more like a [schwa] or "yuz" unless emphasizing the 2nd person target. I believe it's an Irishism.

Regarding the use of yall, yous etc, I wonder if a similar process took place with the Spanish vosotros, which simply means 'you' (plural), but is formed from the words vos otros ("you others"). They also say nosotros for 'we'.